Sabbatical
by September Severtana
Summary: Sherlock and the Doctor are both really lonely men. One of them needs a new assistant, the other needs a new companion. When the Tardis crashes in Baker Street, they both might get what they're looking for. However, they really need someone to stop them from killing each other.
**This takes place in early third season of Sherlock and early fifth season of Doctor Who. Please read and review!**

* * *

Sherlock was lonely.

Now, he'd never felt it as badly as he did currently, but then again, he'd never been affected this badly by anyone's opinion of him.

John Watson had always been different, and Sherlock felt like a complete imbecile thinking any way else. From the very beginning, from the doctor that went into the army, from that first gunshot, from the moment they met, John wasn't a part of the general group of 'people' that Sherlock despised so much. John was and had always been special.

Hence the reason Sherlock had a strange desire to run up to his past self and smack him, preferably harder than John did when he 'came back from the dead'.

He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. All he'd wanted was for John to understand that if anyone tried to hurt him, there'd be an arsenal coming to his defense. Mycroft and Molly and his homeless network knew his reasoning, so why on earth was it so hard for John to understand as well? Hadn't Sherlock given enough information? Hadn't he dug himself into the ground trying to keep John safe? Literally?

But it didn't matter now. There was no way for him to fix what he'd done. Also, he needed a new assistant and had no idea where to go about looking for one. Sherlock vowed to never admit he'd been talking to John the entire day with Molly. She didn't deserve that.

Actually, Sherlock needed his friend back. Needed _a_ friend, period.

* * *

The Doctor woke up in his beloved Tardis, having no clue where he was going. She seemed to have a mind of her own, and he wasn't going to complain. The Doctor loved surprises.

Although, the fact that she was kind of exploding everywhere wasn't the best surprise for coming directly out of regeneration.

"Come on, darling, don't do this to me!" he pleaded, running over to the green lever and yanking on it, subsequently bounding toward the hatch on the floor and kicking it. Sometimes a little smack was all she needed to get back on track. Hey, that rhymed!

The fires wouldn't stop. He'd attempted to pull the fire extinguisher, and then realized there wasn't one. "If you're going to fix yourself once we've landed, can you make one of those for yourself? That would be very helpful." The Tardis simply whirred and sparked at him annoyedly.

She seemed to be landing though; that was good. Crashing, but what was the difference, really? Landing, crashing, it only depended on how violent the impact was. Falling was just like flying, except with a more permanent destination. Who said that again? Somebody important probably. He wasn't exactly in his best state of memory. Or mind. Whatever.

"Someplace fun, come on. Someplace fun!" The Doctor patted the Tardis' controls as kindly as he could considering the situation she'd gotten them into. She would've glared at him had she had a face, but at least she made the noise that meant they were moving. He wondered if she always sounded like she was wheezing when they traveled. The Doctor also wondered if they should get the noise examined by a proper mechanic, but there weren't many mechanics that understood her like he did.

"What do you think about getting a check-up, love?" The Tardis jolted him sharply to the side. Well, he'd guessed her answer, but he just wanted to check. "Sorry, sorry. I hope you'll find someone you'll warm up to faster than me."

But...there wasn't anyone else for her right now. She was just as alone as he was. "No more Tardises for you to talk to, just me. You're probably tired of me, too. And I've...I've got no one either."

She didn't answer him per se, but she did gently rock back and forth. "I'm so sorry, darling."

The Doctor knew it wasn't really his fault, but it felt like it. He'd died again, and left people behind, beautiful, wonderful, smart and sharp, laughing and shouting humans that followed him like the children followed the Pied Piper, or Peter Pan. He'd show them adventure, a life beyond Earth, and then he'd have to leave them in the end.

He was so tired of leaving people.

* * *

Sherlock was in his mind palace, calmly recalling everything he'd ever read about the stages of grief when Mrs. Hudson's high-pitched screeching echoed through the flats. "Would you kindly shut up? I'm working!" Sherlock yelled down to her. When she didn't reply, he huffed and got up from his chair, heading toward the door.

"Mrs. Hudson? What's the matter?" He scaled the stairs quickly, finding his landlady in a dead faint at the bottom of them.

Probably because of the blue police box that had seemingly materialized in the entryway.

The door to said police box flew open and a man stepped out, ragged suit and all. "Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Do you know where I might be able to find a friend? My ship is quite lonely."

"What kind of friend do you want?" Sherlock asked in a barely civil tone of voice. "I can think of many varieties of undesirables that are considered to be friends to certain individuals."

The man cocked his head at Sherlock. "You're angry. Why are you angry?"

"I'm not angry at you," Sherlock replied defensively. "Who said that?"

"Nobody. You're not angry at me, anyway. You're angry at somebody else." The man moved completely out of the police box and took a thin, pencil-sized device from his pocket. Turning it on (making a blue light emanate from it), he ran the light beam over Sherlock. He sighed. "Oh."

"What?"

"You're Sherlock Holmes." His face lit up as he said Sherlock's name, his eyes glittering with mirth. "You're absolutely amazing! Everyone back home was watching to see how you'd turn out, and they would be so jealous that I met you." The man's face suddenly fell. "They're all gone now, though. I can't tell them."

Sherlock looked him over cautiously, but the deductions weren't very helpful. The man was older than he looked, in fact, he'd seen things that most people had never seen, ugly things and beautiful things. It didn't make sense, but he'd been alive a long time. His 'ship', otherwise known as the police box, was falling to pieces as Sherlock watched. His attire explained he'd last been in a rainy place, somewhere that smelled like London, but there hadn't been rain for days. Before that, he'd went to a bar, not a pub, and wrote a note in red ink to someone. And before that, perhaps a wedding. All in the same clothes, so he must traveled between those places rather quickly. However, one didn't travel in a police box. The strangest thing of all was the taint of...radiation poisoning?

"Who are you?"

The man smiled again, abruptly changing from the sad look he had earlier. "I'm the Doctor." He offered no further explanation.

* * *

The Doctor glanced over Sherlock Holmes, noting the deductive face that he'd practically grown up with. Everybody loved geniuses back on Gallifrey, and Sherlock Holmes was the Doctor's favorite. He was so smart and observant, even as a child. The others loved Mycroft more since he was a government man, but the Doctor had never liked rule-followers that much.

He silently thanked the Tardis for bringing him here.

But something was wrong with Sherlock. He was so sad and angry. The Doctor had thought he'd gotten better. It hurt his two hearts to see him like that again.

"Why are you here?" Sherlock asked, folding his arms. Closing himself off, more like. The Doctor frowned. that was no way to deal with problems.

"I'm here for a friend, didn't I say?" He ignored the glowy, fiery, explody thing the Tardis was doing behind him and focused solely on his childhood hero.

"I'm not very good at friends." Sherlock looked down. "I lost the only one I had."

The Doctor tried to remember the one real friend Sherlock had. "Redbeard? Or are we talking about human friends?"

Immediately, Sherlock was back on guard. "How do you know about Redbeard? And yes, we are talking about human friends. I've only had one that mattered."

"So why do you think he or she is lost? Are they dead?" The Doctor couldn't recall any more people Sherlock loved dying.

Sherlock shook his head and laughed bitterly. "He's gone. I said some entirely uncalled for things and he left. I was just trying to explain, but..." He looked at the Doctor like he just noticed he was there. "Why am I telling this to you? You can't turn back time or help me."

"I can so help with that! Meet the Tardis, she'd love to see you." Sherlock gave him a 'do you just look like an idiot' look and pointed to the Tardis, which was steaming and about to blow up.

"Oh shite!" the Doctor shouted, running back inside and grabbing his jacket. He'd get a new one, but for now, he needed the one he had. "Alright, help me put her outside. She can't exactly explode in the flat, I rather like your poor landlady. I gave her a fright on my way in, though. Apologize for me."

He began shifting the Tardis so that he could reach the door to the flat and yank it open. Sherlock pushed her from the other side without much complaining, which the Doctor greatly appreciated. "Now, do you think I can just leave this on the pavement or will people notice?"

"The flat has blown up once or twice. Most people will just think another terrorist is targeting John and I." Sherlock grinned in nostalgia for a split second, but it was gone just as fast.

"So this friend person has a name, does he? I think John is a lovely name. A bit boring, but you can't go wrong with the classics. John Lennon was a very nice man." The Doctor pulled his ship as hard as he could over to the pavement, and Sherlock made sure she didn't get too damaged going down the steps.

"John is not a boring name. It's perfect." Sherlock nearly slammed the Tardis down on the Doctor's foot for that remark.

"Watch it! I'm stuck with these feet for a while yet, don't injure them right away!" He let go of his ship and started running in the opposite direction from her; Sherlock followed without prompting. The Doctor definitely liked where things were going thus far. Sherlock would make a wonderful companion.

* * *

The Doctor was an absolute madman, Sherlock decided. When John limped into his life, he carried a gun and a cane, not a police box/ship that wanted to explode!

"Where the hell are we going?" Sherlock asked incredulously, not having noticed he was following the Doctor until they were a block away from 221B.

"I don't quite know. Nothing to run from yet." The Doctor stopped, leaning up against the side of a building. "Where do you want to go?"

"Can it be a when?"

The Doctor's face childishly flew into a grin again. His moods were difficult to concentrate on for a long period of time. "Of course. I like whens just as much as wheres."

Sherlock stared at him. The other man could very well be a time-traveler. It would explain a lot of things. "I want to apologize to John for implying he would have given me away. My goal with faking my own death was to keep John alive, and I didn't tell him that. I should have kept it simple."

"Yes, you always did have trouble with that, didn't you? But never mind that. You don't need to go back in time to say you're sorry. Apologies rarely ever come too late." The Doctor seemed to know what he was talking about, judging by that look in his eyes. He truly was so old, Sherlock saw it better now.

"You're implying I can walk up to the practice where he works, apologize, and walk back without any repercussions."

"There's no such thing as no repercussions." Frankly, the other man looked horrified at the mere thought. "The both of you will greatly benefit from your actions, and even if you need some time away afterwards, the Tardis should be ready for travel then. We can go wherever or whenever you want, and then you can come back to see what happened." But why would the Doctor offer such a thing? Why did he care so much? Or more likely, why did he want him to fail so badly?

"But why?"

"The Tardis isn't the only one who needs a friend. I do, and you do. I'll probably end up wanting to shut you up all the time, and you'll feel the same way about me, but it'll be better than this." The Doctor gestured around. "You can't stay here much longer without going mad."

Sherlock used all of his powers of deduction to make sure the other man wasn't lying to him. He seemed sincere, he seemed like he cared, like no one ever did.

 _Take a leap of faith, Sherlock,_ a voice whispered in his head. It sounded very much like John.

"Alright. But you're coming with me." His child side came out whenever he had to do something he didn't want to.

"Of course. We can't have you wandering all over London in this state."

"Your clothes are barely keeping it together. You're in more of a state than I am."

"Well, my clothes are supposed to stay this way for a little while longer."

"How do you know?"

"Because the time vortex says so."

"The time vortex can't speak to you!"

* * *

The Doctor and Sherlock Holmes walked all the way to where this John person worked, arguing with every other breath. He rather liked it; he'd always argued with Donna and missed it quite a lot. "Now, I'm not going to come in the room with you. The farthest I'll go is into the building."

"That's fine." Sherlock bounced on the balls of his feet in anticipation. "How do I look? Normal? Coping? Fine?"

"You look fine," the Doctor reassured him, patting his soon-to-be friend on the shoulder. "Let's go knock John's socks off."

The building didn't have those fun rotating doors like banks had. Instead, it had sliding doors. Honestly, he'd rather have sliding doors than say, Deadlocked doors, but they still weren't as fun as the spinning. Apparently John's office was further inside than the Doctor initially wanted to go. Why couldn't Sherlock deal with this by himself? He didn't really need the Doctor's help. Was he moral support? He'd be alright with that. Go Sherlock!

Sherlock stood in front of John's office door, hands unable to keep still. "What are you waiting for?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothing."

He opened the door and practically flew in, giving whom the Doctor assumed was John a bit of a scare. "Sherlock, what are you doing here?" He didn't sound angry, just curious and surprised. Sherlock had no reason to be so nervous.

"I had to tell you before I went." Sherlock framed John's face in his hands and planted a kiss on his lips. It made a smacking sound as Sherlock pulled away. The Doctor hadn't really expected that, but oh well. "I'm sorry for not telling you I was alive. I always meant to and it hurt not saying anything but I couldn't let anybody related to Moriarty hurt you."

"Sherlock?" the Doctor called, looking at a portion of wall to the left of John's office door. There was a crack in it, a strange, depth-less, crooked smile-looking crack on the wall. And it hadn't been there before. "You might want to come see this."

"Give me a moment," Sherlock called back, sounding extremely annoyed. "John, I have to go. He can't be left alone, otherwise he'll probably blow himself to smithereens." He kissed John again and said, "I love you. I'll be back soon."

Sherlock ran out of the room to come look at the crack in the wall. "You're right. There's something wrong with that crack."

"It looks like a space-time rip. Two places of the universe, side by side when they're not supposed to be."

"If that's true, doesn't that mean we can walk through?" Sherlock asked, a confident gleam back in his eye. "Think of it as my first trip."

The Doctor smiled. "Come on then. Let's see."

They both stepped through the crack and into a little girl's bedroom, the crack closing behind them, while the Tardis blew up, throwing debris all over Baker Street, frightening several neighbors. John Watson had his fingers to his lips, wondering what in God's name just happened.


End file.
